Any RPG fans here?

I'm currently playing Dungeon Siege II (only about 1/3 way through), and just yesterday signed onto World of Warcraft. I'm not exactly new at this (played the paper versions back in the 70s) but I've been only a sporadic player, so I'm not very good at it

I'm all table-top RPG. Back in college, played AD&D, Shadowrun, Gamma Worlds, Twilight 2000, and Paranoia. After college, played boat loads more.

Now-a-days, just AD&D 2nd Edition. I'm currently playing a wimpy, peace loving magic-user / thief (boxman). He frolics, likes to take hot baths, and says the occassional Freudian slip. He keeps a journal and recently wrote some poetry with the true names of demons encoded in the lines. Recently befriended a demi-lich. Ah, I'm gonna stop right there.

some of my first hacks were done on the old ad&d games for the commodore 64. i'd edit the various objects so i had +5 on everything i've played any number of fantasy type computer games over the years. one of my favorites was 'Island of Kesmai' which could be found on compuserve and later on Genie. i also played 'Dragon's Gate', a text only game, but multiplayer and tons of fun. later, i got into ultima online, which i hated and it only lasted a month, and asheron's call, which was pretty good and lasted about a year on and off. in the early 90's when we first found the 'internet', i also found MUD's.

but, i got quite fed up with rpg fantasy genre. they kept making the same old mistakes. so, i wrote my own. this was also a MUD. i rented web server space on a MUD hosting site and had two coders working the code for us. i was the designer/admin and they coded. this was all done through telnet when 'broadband' was still pretty much unheard of and computers were running MUCH slower. we had very limited space on the server and our code had to be quite compact. thankfully, i had two geniuses hacking the code and we innovated some pretty fancy stuff in a very small space.

we used a system of double ascii character mapping. yup. we had a map. you used two characters as one space on the map. so, something like [] was a wall. a door was |- , or, if it was open it would be |/ . and not only did we have a map, but we had a 3d map. our world was the first truly 3d mud ever. the gentlemen doing the code made a 3d array with zones. we could collapse and expand any zone based on if anyone was nearby. thus, folks walking around wouldnt use much ram, which we also had a limit on. they'd see only what they needed to see and the rest would stay zipped up till needed.

our map not only used ascii graphics, but it also used color. so, a gray [] wall space might be stone, while a brown [] wall space might be wood. a stairs going up was an up arrow, while a stairs going down would be a down arrow. the view was an overhead view. so, a room might look like this:

creatures and people were represented with letters and numbers on the map. this is partially why we used a double character system. you didnt want the symbol for the person or creature to obscure the map symbols completely. the 'a' represents the person 'john'. the list of names of 'mobs' (mobiles, which meant any real or imaginary person or creature), were listed on the top right, off the map. so, you'd see 'a' enter the room and know it was 'john'. anyone who's played 'Hack' or one of those type games knows what i'm talking about here

we also had real time landscape editing. we could make or change or delete terrain as we saw fit, on the fly! i could make a grayscale image the size of our world and load it into the program and the program would translate the values of gray as terrain types and alter the entire world in a few seconds.

we had a creature editor which was quite innovative. i could create new creatures, editing in any parts i wanted the critter to have. if i wanted a flying monkey, i could make a flying monkey and it could fly in our 3d world.

we had true line of sight viewing. you could only see the map parts that the person in that position on the map would be able to normally see.

and one of my personal favorites was, i could edit the ai and the creature generation. i always hated that rpg's always spawned the same critters in the exact same locations. this was just TOO predictable for me and one the reasons i decided to write my own. so, i could edit critters with an ai. the system was dynamic, not static. critters could move around on their own without someone being nearby. they coudl and would spawn even if no one was around. critters could interact with other critters regardless of players. i had a system of hidden levels that could move critters around on a fixed basis or random. i had critters that would attack anything, others that would run at the first glance of humans, others that were harmless until attacked and so on. and, they spawned by intelligent spawning rules, not the overly predictable normal rpg type thing.

hehe, ok, so you found one of my passions and i'm now writing a book on the forum here. we had a lot of fun doing this thing. the coders were brilliant. one guy went on to teach microsoft programmers to program better. the other went on to college at Harvey Mudd univ. he was 14 when he started working with us and did almost all of the major coding. the old adage of if you dont like it, do it yourself fully applied and we took full advantage of it. i've only mentioned some of the major points we actually did and not even some that were planned. i had quite a universe worked out. i think i even have the thing around here somewhere on an old 2.1 gig harddrive, though, i'd be hard pressed to run it now. it was on a linux partition i used back then

so, world of warcraft... i've heard any number of things about it. quite buggy at first and servers were jammed, but i also heard they've fixed a lot of that. i'll be interested in any reviews you might want to post, doug.

dungeon siege... was that the one where they built the code with the idea of modding things? or was that the glitzy, hi-res one? there were a couple i played around with, but they all had the same basic mechanical mistakes and i eventually dropped them. you could mod in both of the ones i'm thinking of, but their universes were flawed, so i gave them up.

and if you like massive multplayer online games, you might check out World War II Online. that was one of the best combat games i've ever played. just one small example... i was playing on the allied side. we were trying to capture a town. it took hours, but we finally got it! the enemy counter-attacked and the battle went on for hours more! i finally had to go offline and didnt get back on till the next day. the battle over that town was STILL going on the next day when i logged in!! that just floored me!

WWII online had some big plans. i only played during the beta, so i dont know how much they ever implemented. heck, i dont know if they're still going or not, but if they are, it might be interesting to see how far they got.

at any rate, doug, watch out for all the 'addict' signs, loss of income due to playing, divorce, losing weight because you forget to eat, loss of sleep and sleep schedules altered severely and so on and so forth

I've dabbled with text adventures. I got about as far as characters that roam and using prepositions in the parser. One text adventure that I did was extremely sarcastic and could keep track of sarcastic rhetoric.

I gave that up in favor of automatic AD&D character generators. The last incarnation of my prog was rather 'smart'. That is, you could look at a generated character and everything would fit together well. Attributes, race, class, and all that jazz. I wonder if I've still got the listing for this somewhere...?

Dungeon Siege II is a great game-- and when they finally get the problems ironed out, Dungeon Lords will be an amazing game (great concept, great playing, poor programming). Neverwinter Nights is an excellent RPG, probably one of the longest playtimes too. I'm also a big fan of Gothic and Gothic II.

One of the things I'd like to do is run my own online RPG-- well, I've been working on it. Though, I don't think I'm going to bring it to the world of 3D, most likely stick with low-bandwidth 2D tiles or sprites.

I started off with the Ultima games back in the 80's. Became addicted to online gaming with my first 56k modem and Diablo around '97, then moved on to a 2 year addiction to Ultima Online. Dabbled for a while with Baldur's Gate, though single player. I haven't played anything for about 3 years, I've just lost the patience for it. But I have some of my fondest memories making friends and getting up to all kinds of milarky in Ultima Online *lol*

I spent some (most) of yesterday in World of Warcraft building up my Taurene Shaman to a level 10. Now I'm killing everything in site to try to earn the 25 silver required for a 2nd backpack (my main backpack is filled with quest items, so no room for loot). Someone I've never heard of (but a live player) simply walked past me and blessed me with 4 spells that boost all my attributes 25%. Of course, another live player poached one of the prey I was hunting.

It's a strategy game.. Chess fans might find a comparison, except that it's animated with fair graphics. I've found that just playing The other nations the computer generates makes for a decent ongoing challenge when I feel like getting away from it all but the computer is only good at hindering development.. once powerfull armys are acquired the computer plays less effectively.

I think the Game will be around for awhile.. it's a microsoft game and they have an online gaming site.. Most folks there play games that leap right into battle, not really what I have in mind... I'm more for the longer playing venue.. where the challenge is to exploit resources and effectively maneuver the kingdom into a powerhouse of wealth and armament..

The 20 choices of actual civilizations makes for countless strengths and weaknesses to give the game a different feel each time played.. as do the 100's of map styles.

Well just in case thought i'd ask! (again)!

I play Age of EmpiresII "Gold Edition".. sadly Microsoft followed the success of this Edition by going fantasy thereafter.. with Mythology and sadder yet threw in Giants after that. The good news is the game is cheap and doesn't require a real powerhouse for a computer.

Well love to continue but trebuchets are attacking the south wall and what few knights I have are off maurading.